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Cake day: September 3rd, 2023

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  • Three very different games I actually took notes for :

    La Mulana. In the “modern” version you have limited memory space to save some of the many texts you find, but you’ll need more than that to solve the puzzles anyway. Good luck trying to scribble the weird pixelated symbols on your notes, too.

    I play Shin Megami Tensei games with notes to optimize fusions, when I have a particular demon in mind and I want them to inherit the right skills. Later games let you see fusion results, but only one step ahead.

    And then there’s spacechem. I love Zachtronics games in general, and all the following ones tend to be progressive in difficulty and let you experiment from a good enough solution to better solutions. As the first, less refined one, spacechem is special. Before long it needs planning and calculations to even get something that works.



  • I actually never played old Tetris, even though I had a NES and a gameboy. I was kinda late on the Tetris bandwagon.

    There’s a sort of NES Tetris mode in Tetris Effect. Having played mainly “modern” Tetris, like DS, standard Effect and 99, I just hadn’t realized how I’d miss all the little things that were refined around the 90s. No hard drop, no super rotation, completely random block distribution, no hold… Rough.

    Weird that a game that looks exactly the same could feel that different.






  • Yeah, I’d say so too.

    IMO HZD was not even a good open world game, it doesn’t reward (and arguably often punishes) player-initiated exploration. Also it’s almost unplayable without the very intrusive HUD, because the stuff you have to find is buried in the very busy background, and they don’t use environmental hints much. Except the infamous yellow paint, which is a rather lazy way to do this.

    However. Characters and world building are great, and quite unique. And trapping or pinning down machines and exploiting their weaknesses can be satisfying, when it clicks.

    It was kind of a curve ball to me, missing some of the stuff I usually consider good game design but making the journey engaging and unique enough that I didn’t mind too much.